Why Liberals Should Be Pro-Life

The Lib Dems I know and have worked with are generally an open minded sort ready to listen to new and different ideas, never dismissive of anything and anyone and inclusive of all creeds with all views. That is until I told them about my views on abortion. How can I call myself a liberal and not be pro-choice they say, despite the President of their own party being opposed to abortion? So I thought it was about time I clarified my views if for no other reason than to stop those wild accusations of being a closet Christian fundamentalist who invariably hates all women, gays, old people (I'm against euthanasia too) which inevitably ends up somehow making me a fascist who secretly gets off watching the bad guy in "V for Vendetta" as part of a radically right wing socially conservative agenda. Some really cross the line though, and accuse me of being a closet Conservative.

I have always been personally opposed to abortion but in the beginning was outwardly indifferent (as in I didn't consider it a priority as opposed to not giving a damn about others) because even though I felt uncomfortable with the notion of terminating what could be a living breathing human being, I had never really thought about it in much depth. Then one day a couple of years ago, the Evening Standard published pictures, taken courtesy of new technology enabling much more graphic and detailed ultra-sound scans, of an embryo at 24 weeks -the legal limit up until which abortion is permitted here in the UK. The pictures showed the foetus, which looked like any newborn baby appearing to walk in the womb and suck on its thumb. Although hardly a conclusive case for pro-lifers, it did bring the issue of abortion to the front of my mind and made me think about it like never before. Since then, abortion has become much more prominent in the minds of the wider public too as pre-natal genetic engineering, sex selection and disability screening before 24 weeks to offer parents the option to abort early on in the pregnancy have provoked wide-scale debate.

Furthermore, the experts have been split over the issue with one of the UK's leading abortion clinics calling for the upper limit to be reduced back in 2005 and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service calling recently for the abortion laws to be liberalised. The issue has become so prescient that the British Medical Association was led to debate the abortion limit for the first time since 1989, only just deciding to reject calls to revise and reduce it. Indeed even Parliament itself debated reducing the limit and imposing a 10 day 'cooling off period' that would require women to wait ten days after requesting an abortion before undergoing the procedure with the intent of the proposal being to give them time to reconsider their decision. The motion was defeated with Labour MP Chris McCafferty labelling it as "an attack on women's reproductive rights".

So, why do I oppose abortion? First, the issue is not and should not be perceived as life versus choice. The foundation of the pro-choice movement is that they do not consider a foetus that is not viable -cannot survive outside the womb- to be alive. To quote pro-choice feminist Zoe Williams: “if you do not consider this foetus human, then it becomes no more of an issue than getting a tumour removed.” My argument, however, is that within a de facto liberal democracy such as the United Kingdom, the unborn should be considered alive and their right to life protected by and enshrined in the law. There are four reasons why I believe this. 1) The current definition of when life begins is inconsistent, 2) Being uncertain that the unborn are alive is not confirmation that they are not, 3) Far from empowering women, abortion as a solution to unwanted pregnancies undermines the progress of the women's movement, 4) It is morally inconsistent to live in a society which prohibits euthanasia, but permits abortion.

1) The current abortion term limit in the United Kingdom is 24 weeks and requires the consent of two doctors. The limit used to be 28 weeks as established by the Abortion Act of 1967, but was cut to 24 in 1990 following the passing of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. This limit reflects the viability of the foetus i.e. if it can survive outside of the womb and is commonly, but mistakenly, understood to determine when a foetus becomes alive. However, when discussing the origins of human life, there is hardly a consensus around 24 weeks as the starting point. Developmental biologists consider it to be the completion of fertilization. Reproductive physiologists argue that implantation –the beginning of pregnancy- is a more accurate estimate. Indeed, to quote Justice Blackmun who wrote for the majority of the US Supreme Court in the case of Roe v Wade in 1973: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” This is why the viability of a foetus is used to establish the abortion limit. However, as technology improves, more and more premature babies, delivered before 24 weeks survive outside the womb. In addition, most doctors and clinics in the UK today will not consider carrying out a termination after 20 weeks unless it is a medical emergency in which the mother’s life is jeopardised because of the questionable nature of the 24 week limit. This, however, provides only an argument to reduce the current abortion limit– a proposal backed by David Steel, the man responsible for introducing the Abortion Act in 1967 in the first place.

2) As stated above, there is no consensus around when human life begins, contrary to the claims of many such as former President of the National Organisation of Women, Eleanor Smeal who asserted that “everybody knows that life begins only after birth.” As such, the issue of when life begins is fudged by legislators with emphasis being placed instead on viability. Such a judgement presumes then that the foetus is not alive prior to the expiry of the 24 week limit, not even on the 28th day of the 23rd week of pregnancy –bearing in mind at this point that just last week, the world’s most premature baby, born four months ago after less than 22 weeks in the womb, was deemed healthy enough to be taken home by her parents- even though the question of when life begins has not yet been answered, meaning that we are no more certain that the unborn foetus is not alive than we are that it is. In other words, as demonstrated by the words of a supreme court judge as well as the achievments of modern technology, it is entirely possible for a foetus to be alive and to be viable, but still be terminated.

This is significant as no judge in a liberal democracy such as ours that deems the right to life as the most sacrosanct of them all would allow the termination of a foetus considered to be alive and doubtless virtually no woman would request one, except if her life was at risk or her child was destined to be born with severe and life-threatening disabilities as is the rule of thumb now with late term abortions. My question therefore is this: In a liberal democracy where life is sacred and the law chooses sides only when all reasonable doubt has been eliminated; how is it that in the case of the unborn child, the burden of proof is placed on those who argue that it is alive rather than on those who argue that it is not when the evidence is inconclusive at best? Furthermore, why is it that when a bill in Parliament is introduced to amend current abortion law, accepting the premise of viability as an appropriate determinant of the legal abortion limit, to cut that limit in order to reflect the progress of medicine and technology that enables babies born at 22 weeks to survive, is voted out of Parliament and seen as an attack on the progress of women’s rights as if the two were mutually exclusive?

3) One of the most widely held assumptions today is that abortion is a feminist issue and that to be pro-life is to be a shauvinist and misogenist. I would heavily dispute both these assumptions. First, the claim that abortion is a feminist issue is based on the premise that women are entitled to choose what happens to their own body and that to therefore oppose abortion is to oppose a woman’s right to choose –hence pro abortion movements calling themselves pro choice. One look at the reasons why women abort though reveals that such a decision often has very little to do with choice. The top reasons for having an abortion, according to a 1998 study across 27 countries are desire to delay child-bearing, fear of interruption of career or education and financial or relationship instability. If anything, such reasons demonstrate the continuing capitulation of women to a society dominated by men where having a career and children at the same time still carry such a negative stigma, not to mention the remaining disparities between men and women’s rate of pay which directly affect one’s capacity to bring up a child.

More to the point though, historically, feminism has had a substantial pro-life element about it. Some of feminism’s most pioneering activists and thinkers dating back to the 19th century were staunchly anti-abortion. Two of the leading figures of the women’s movement back then included Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull. Anthony argued that “abortion was the product of a social system that compelled women to remain ignorant about their bodies, that enabled men to dominate them sexually without taking responsibility for the consequences, that denied women support during and after the resulting pregnancies, and that placed far more value on a child’s legitimacy than his or her life and well-being.” Anthony was not just another campaigner loosely associated to the women’s movement though. She was a publisher who regularly wrote about the hypocrisy of society regarding the treatment of women, vociferously campaigned for the abolition of slavery, women’s right to own property and founded the National Woman’s Suffrage Association, playing an instrumental role in the securing of women’s suffrage. Her views on abortion were echoed by the first woman in the United States to become a doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell. Woodhull too asked: “Is it not equally to destroy life, to crush it in its very germ, and to take it when the germ has evolved to any given point in its line of development?” Again, Woodhull was not just your average feminist, she was the first woman to run for President of the United States in 1870. Such sentiments were not exclusive to America either. Many of Britain’s greatest feminists including Mary Wollestoncraft and Emmelline Parkhurst shared very much the same views

4) Euthanasia is relevant to the abortion debate for one simple reason. How can it be deemed just to take a life not yet lived without consent but not a life lived out with consent? True, this is as much an argument in favour of euthanasia, but I am against euthanasia, for reasons to which I will devote a different article. Nevertheless, both camps would surely recognise the same contradiction in the law that deems it criminal to grant the request of an individual who is approaching the end of their life to die because their life has become unlivable, promoting life over choice, whilst sanctioning the termination of the unborn precisely in the name of choice.

To take this argument further what of those who exist in vegetative states, relying on life support machines? Those who show no sense of consciousness or awareness other than minimal reflexes if that? Their guardians, spouses or families are not allowed to decide for them whether they should live or die unless their doctors conclude that they have no hope for improvement. Noting that there is increasing evidence, that unborn foetuses are far more aware of themselves and their surroundings than once presumed. Considering that if carried to term, they would ‘improve’ to the point of being fully developed newborn babies, providing no complications occur during the remainder of the pregnancy, then why does the law not extend the same rights and protections to the unborn as it does to those in vegetative states?

All the above are reasons why I am against abortion, but to ask me whether I would support a ban on abortion such as that imposed by the state of South Dakota in America last year is a different question, one to which I would anwer with a resounding NO. This is not to say I do not believe that access to abortions should be more restricted, I do. I would like to see the UK's abortion law more closely resemble that of Ireland, where only a risk to the mother's life through complications or threat of suicide would warrant an abortion. Such a law would not come with any abortion limit as viability should not be a factor, only life, although I expect that in cases where the baby is viable and the mother's life in risk, emergency caesarions become the more likely option. Such changes should only be made, however, in tandem with a vast array of reforms and initiatives that are missing from these countries' and states' abortion laws. These include revamping systems of state support and counselling for mothers to be, especially those who would otherwise abort because of financial difficulties. The liberalisation of adoption laws in the UK is a massive step forward with gay couples being allowed to adopt to make up for the shortfall of children left at the mercy of the foster system where they are moved from home to home, never allowed to settle with some suffering horrendous abuse at the hands of those entrusted with their safety.

Readdressing the way society addresses sex is another hurdle that needs to be overcome with a real need for increased provision and accessibility of contraception. The socio-economic factors that see so many teenage girls fall pregnant, with the UK having the highest rate of teenage births in Western Europe also urgently need to be addressed. But most importantly of all, women need to be convinced. specifically I mean women who aren't necessarily highly vulnerable individuals, but undergo abortions because they are not ready for childbirth as it risks undermining their careers, their education or their relationship. To scream abuse at women who choose this option, accusing them of being child-murderers who see abortion as just another form of contraception is not just unhelpful, but also unjust especially considering that their actions are entirely legal as things stand. Furthermore the latest research as revealed in a joint study by the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organisation shows that abortion rates remain the same in countries where it is banned as in those where it is not with only effective provision of contraception proving to effect a decline in abortion. In any case, as strongly as I feel about abortion, a repetition of the case of a 14 year old girl in Ireland, prevented from leaving the country to go to the UK for an abortion, is something that we must take great pains to avoid. Respect for women and women's rights and a substantive effort to fund and support the alternatives will achieve more than a simple 'crackdown' on abortion, but the law does need to change.